Bob and I have a long history.



















Frank and Friends(This is not my photo.)


I think my first Bob Dylan album was of course, The Greatest Hits. But the next one I got, John Wesley Harding, was the one that hooked me for life.

I got it shortly after my big brothers moved out and I got my own space, my own room. I've only been living with these two guys in the same bedroom, in our large three room apartment, with the folks, the last 17 years or so. Finally the guns and knives were all gone.

Some time I'll tell you about the deer head on the wall, and the bows, and quivers full of arrows, and more weaponry that you can imagine, tucked away under the beds and in the corners of the closet. Slingshots, razor blades, and such.

Anyway, back to Bob.

It's truly been a long a long and winding road, a strange trip, if you know what I mean. And yeah, he is still out there.

If you don't have a copy of the latest, Modern Times, I suggest you get one. It's truly wonderful.



Yeah, I'm a fan.

Thanksgiving in the Big Empty

Thanksgiving morning, not long after getting up, I was feeling, well, melancholy would be the best word I know of for describing the feeling. So I got my camera and set out with the intention of capturing that feeling in an image. I drove up to the top of Mount Muccabull, and found the world to be gloriously beautiful, with the new fallen snow, the puffy clouds hanging off the tops of all the mountain ranges in sight, and the sky a bright clear blue. This wasn't helping at all with my project, so I thought I might come back into town and find the shot I was seeking.

The picture above was taken on the return, from very near the town dump, and gives a nice view of the Little Humboldt Valley. You can just make out a homestead in the lower middle field of winter dried sagebrush. It also provides some much needed scale to the photo.

To make a long story short, I failed in my original mission, but felt much better having spent a couple of hours outdoors taking in the cold air, light, and space.
















I took several dozen shots, and the most interesting one, to me, was this one.

Yield and overcome.

Yield and Overcome














Winnemucca Mountain - Feb 2006


Be Really whole,
And All things will come to you.
- Lao Tsu - Tao te ching


Reality, the thing I like about it is you to to create it yourself. And the really amazing thing is that everbody else gets to do it too, and at the same time!

It's really fun.

Since you get to create your own reality, you can create your own future.

But, when you begin to plan your alternate futures, it begins, the constant discernment and discrimination. The dual nature of existence indicates that this is exactly the point at which you lose your awareness of reality.

So, there you go, you get to create your own reality, but it doesn't really exist.

NOLA - Revival or Decline?

I was in New Orleans a year before Katrina, and now have had the chance to return a year after Katrina. The city has a strange feel, something difficult to put a name on, but it is very palpable. Maybe it's the ghosts. Not just those from the storm, but those from times past, back to haunt the city. The streets which once teemed with people are now much quieter.

I remember watching the crowds of people on the streets in 2004, going to and from work, bustling along like a crowd in any other big city, some singing, some frowning, some walking in groups and some hustling along. Like the downtown we have seen in other southern cities, the vast majority were working black people, getting on and off the buses in swarms in the early morning and late afternoon. Now most of those folks are simply gone. By comparison, the streets now seem almost deserted.

We took the Katrina disaster tour around the city in a small tour bus to see the effects of the disaster up close, and it's shameful what is happening here. The stories and the pictures you have seen in the press are much better than anything I could produce, but the miles and miles of damaged, destroyed, and abandoned houses is shocking in its scope. There are still huge communities, and neighborhoods, almost completely abandoned. The local retail network is gone as well. We saw closed, abandoned Wallmart's on this tour for gods sake. This is not just the poor people either, I saw many houses that around here would bring 2.5K to 1.5 million around here. Folks say they are mostly fighting with insurance companies and red tape.

Less than half the original population has been able to return to the city. Huge sections are simply abandoned, and sit silent and rotting away. Everywhere in the occupied parts of the city there are help wanted signs in the windows. Many more jobs than there are people to fill.

The locals say the big problems are lack of housing and the high cost of living. I heard this afternoon that the cost of electricity is nearly four times higher than before the storm. Rents are more than double, if you can even find a place to live.

It's also clear that the people here have not forgotten the failure, and continued failure, of the federal government to come to their aid. Several of the speakers at the conference I attended mentioned the President's fly-over, his slapping FEMA Director Michael Brown on the back with a "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job", and then his return to stand in front of the Saint Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square to tell them that he and the American People would do whatever it takes to provide the help they needed. With the background lit by generator powered klieg lights, he promised to start a program larger than the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after the second World War. Of course they haven't seen him or the help since then. His people are on it, somewhere filling out paperwork and writing reports, earning Three Figure Salaries doing it. Someplace cozy and far away.













President Bush in New Orleans 9/15/2005 AP Photo

During my trip in 2004 the plaza out front of this church was filled with street musicians playing for the tourists, and tonight it was completely silent. Only a few homeless people occupying some benches.

The locals are also very quick to tell you that it wasn't the storm, or the storm surge, that destroyed their city, it was the failure of the containment walls that were supposed to hold the water in the canals. The levees around the city all held, and the storm surge didn't overtop them. The pilings driven into the bog to hold the canal walls were simply too short to do the job. Again it was the federal government and the Corp of Engineers that let them down.

Folks are also pretty angry at most of the national press for coming in briefly from time to time since the storm and reporting only on rumors of disease and crime, and then leaving. Then it's up to the local press to try and correct the misinformation. During a talk today at the conference I'm attending, John Pope, a reporter from the Times-Picayune , described this as "sweeping up after the elephants". When John was describing the events surrounding the floods, and the problems encountered since, there were several times he had to stop and gather himself to keep from breaking down.

He did praise CNN, NBC, and the New York Times, for keeping the story alive.

Up near Bourbon Street there is some activity. I found these guys, Stony B and blind Grandpa Elliott, playing blues on a street corner. This was the best thing I saw or heard during the whole trip.

Le Pooch

I thought this photo was up here somewhere, but I've been combing the archives and can't find it. This post will fix that. This is the dog. In this photo he appears to be very happy. This picture made the front page of the local newspaper, but Sammy wasn't that impressed by the news, he is more interested in eating.

Sammy's brain, or maybe it's his stomach, has a built in clock. On weekend afternoons he will come looking for me every day somewhere between 4:45 and 5:00. Then he won't leave me alone until I feed him, cause he knows it's time to eat. Last Sunday afternoon he came looking for me at exactly 4:00 in the afternoon because he didn't know about the daylight savings time running out. It will take him all the way to next weekend to adjust. But that's easy because he gets to eat each night at whatever time I get home, so he thinks I keep his schedule messed up during the week, I'm sure he is probably back on schedule by Tuesday, but I'm not home yet, so it does him no good.

He is adopted. We love him.

Rocket Man










Photo by Jim Wilson/New York Times

Seems that something else is burning on the Black Rock Desert.

I found this item in the NY Times.

Something else that's going on out here in the big empty that I only heard about once before, about four years ago. I haven't seen anything in the local press, or the regional press about it, ever.

It looks like a lot of fun. The rockets we used to shoot up (hopefully up!) would only go about a thousand feet, and that was a big one, most of them would only go up a couple of hundred feet. The best were the hand held bottle rockets.

"From Florham Park, N.J., and as far away as London, 100 launchers came - plumbers, paint contractors, firefighters, bankers and Silicon Valley techies united by their passion for building rockets capable of blasting 94,000 feet into the air, at nearly three-and-one-half times the speed of sound, as one record-setter did this weekend."

This, fellow Americans and co-conspirators for a return to a rational, civil and intelligent America, is what we've got.

Knott Creek















Took a little road trip to spend the afternoon floating around in this lake on a pneumatic chair. Fly fishing in one of the most storied little gems in the state. We hiked up to the top of this hill on the west side to get a nice panoramic shot. And of course, for the view. On the way up, we flushed out fourteen or fifteen mule deer, then watched as they gracefully bounded up the rocky hillside and disappeared over the crest.

I was keeping an eye on a pair of eagles we had been watching fly around for the last hour. When I got up on the outcrop, one of the eagles came down and started doing tight circles around me as I was standing on the peak of the rock. Then they soared slowly away, drifting over to the other side of the canyon.















It was magical. I can still feel its power.

M@M
8-31-2006















Ray Abshire, Courtney Granger, and Andre Michot, these guys produce some very strange and mysterious music. Something Harry Smith and his Old Weird America might contain. Singing in Acadian French Cajun, in a high wail that might sound like death, they play trance music typically used in their own big dance parties at a Mardi Gras like the Mamou Mardi Gras Courir

It was an incredible evening.

On the back wall you can see the talisman made from the horsehair that Betse Ellis fiddled off her bow when the Wilders were in town.

Black Rock Burn
Photo by ra hirschi at Burning Man 2005














The tribe is gathering on the desert about 100 miles due west of here. The local grocery and dry goods stores are jammed with people taking advantage of their last chance to buy provisions.

Burning Man starts today and I'd like to be there. Every time I see all these folks go through town it makes me want to join up. In many ways these look like my people. You can see it in their eyes, they still very much believe in possibilities, and so I'm drawn to them.

About a week later, as they all stream back through town, and look like people that truly have been lost in the desert for weeks, usually covered in a deep layer of fine playa dust and ash, their bikes which looked so nice on top of their cars a week ago destroyed, tents and gear all trashed, I think, well I made the right decision to avoid the whole thing, then you look closely at them, and their eyes are sparkling, and they are still grinning, and only looking for a hot meal and five or six hot showers.

East Ely Rail Yards















On a recent road trip to Ely I spent a while in the rail yards of the Northern Nevada Railroad. Reminded me of the hours I spent in the rail yards in my home town on the high plains. Living only two blocks from the roundhouse and switching yard provided a great opportunity to a 12 year old kid. We'd go there at night, or on a Sunday afternoon, and climb on and through the railcars and equipment, always on the lookout for the railroad detectives that were known to show no mercy to children.

Interesting picture. Try to find the focal point.

The Empire State



















Frog on the transplant's turf in Williamsburg.

Into the oven.


















The colors in the sky this night looked like hot coals from a fire tossed into the blue ocean.

Hoods in Muccabull Springs!

The town filled up with hoods.
JD's.
They were all over town, showing their colors and strutting their stuff.

2.0 NY Doors



















- your car is safe with us -

FABULOUS

Near sundown on Saturday, OLD GLORY waving in the breeze, and the big car show was in town. The Fifties Fever. So we went downtown to see what was happening.

It was empty.

The streets and sidewalks were all deserted. The whole party had moved to the west side of town, either at the street drags behind Arby's or the street dance at the Model T. So we decided to go into the big tent America's Car Museum at the Flying A Garage had set up in the west Winner's parking lot. The tent contains about a dozen or so cars from the collection. The entire collection is said to be over 160 vintage one-of-a-kind automobiles. Every one we saw that night was cool.












This is the famous Winnemucca Propane Car. This car held some sort of land speed record, I should have take a photo of the story that was posted over it.

This small glimpse of the car collection going into the new museum is really amazing. Take a look a just one small item now in the collection.















This one was Miss Patti's favorite, the desert dusty rose CADDY.
It's about 27 feet long.

After that we went home, we had missed the party completely.

Butch headin' out, from the Sundance in Muccabull Springs.

1.0 NY Doors















Detail of a stencil applied to a doorway in Williamsburg.

Forty-Four Hours















It's time for the local desert and surrounds to experience the heat of deep summer. And of course along with that comes the famous forty-four hour tournament, which is the biggest event around these parts every year. Small children in Muccabull Springs can't wait to reach the age that they can wander into the swarm and witness how exciting life will be when they finally become of age.

Dog Licking Himself.

















I left the gate open on July 4th, and forgot about it. I then left the house for a few minutes, and when I came back he was gone. I rode all around the neighborhood on my bike looking for him, and after about 1/2 hour I gave up. An hour and a half later he showed up a the Tone Monger's house and I had to retrieve him. Really tired when he got home, but happy about the adventure.

Cowboy




















I went downtown at lunch today to find a picture to post, and this is what I came across out front of the Hole in the Wall.

Winnemucca Clones














We went to the mule races and the anticipation hanging in the air prior to post time was so thick you could cut it with a knife. The cloned mules both won their heats on Saturday, and will run against each other this afternoon in the last race of the day. It's big news.












Scott Sady AP Photo

Piece o' Moon














I just added the feed tool, and I'm testing it out.

This shot was taken the other night just after sunset, the piece of moon hanging just above the mountains.

Bridge Street Bridge








I had something to say about this when I first posted it, and then I didn't. Now I can't remember what it was.

Nice photo; just below the high water mark.

This is before.

Lower photo is cropped from an image in the collection of the Humboldt Museum. Thank You.

April Sunset

More later......

MORE

Yard Yellow

The tulips think that it's Spring. This is the weekend that the yard work must begin. The first of a long season that will require much cleaning and care outside.

On the Banks of the beautiful East River NYC
This is a transplant.


















Always liked this shot. Hard to believe this was almost a year ago. A hot afternoon and the sun was going down. What's not to love about being in NYC.

The Black Cats Run for Cover










This all started the other day, when I had to go to the big city for a meeting.

I had dropped my camera out of my backpack, and didn't know when it happened. So I get up in the morning, back in Muccabull Springs, and it was raining very hard, and it had been raining for hours. So I went into my backpack for the camera, cause I was going to go outside and take some pictures. But it wasn't there, cause it was laying under a table in a dark room in the corner of a big important looking building over 150 miles away. Of course I didn't know that, so I had to go on the hunt for about 60 hours, or until it was found four days later.

So anyway, I was going to miss this great photo op because I had lost my camera. So I borrowed one, and took this during the storm. It's Akien.

Skinny Tires

These tires are great, especially for mounting on the hood, since you have to look over the top of it.
























This is not a BB Photo, but the scanned image of the catalog cover.
So the parts catalog showed up and lo and behold it's the same high quality and carefully crafted publication it's been since inception. If the inventory is on hand, it's a simply amazing resource. If you have always wanted a Rover, and wondered about the experince, this is probably the best place in the world to start. Order a copy of the catalog, it will be a collectors item one day. With this book, a good map, and some imagination, you can travel to almost anywhere on the globe, and well prepared, breakdowns and repairs in the field become part of the fun!















This is the view I remember from the operators seat in the cabin, with the larger tires fitted.

This one is not mine either.

Spring

Spring

-Bah Humbug- Bleak and Gray














This has been the view out the front window. You'll see it is so soggy and wet that the Big "M" up on the hill, the one that stands prowdly for Muccabull Springs, has slid down the hill and turned itself over into a W. It's green and looks like the mold has begun to take over.

Trout Fishing in America


I snatched this out of the stream as it went by the other day. Now I don't know what to do with it.

"... held a patent on the term "tomatoketchup."

Kathleen Pflueger, Porcelain Fan, Dies at 90
Published: April 5, 2006

Kathleen Powers Pflueger, owner of one of the world's great collections of 18th-century porcelain and 16th- and 17-century faience, a form of earthenware, died on March 30 surrounded by her pieces in the Park Avenue apartment that she had designed to house them. She was 90.

Her death was confirmed by her nephew Donald H. Dewey.

Mrs. Pflueger, who was known as Kiyi (pronounced kai-yai), was born into a family that counted among its ancestors early settlers of Manhattan, Rhode Island and Martha's Vineyard.

She was drawn into the rarefied world of porcelain by her husband, Edward M. Pflueger, who had begun collecting it in the 1930's. They married in 1943. Mr. Pflueger had immigrated to the United States from Germany to establish an American base for Bayer A.G., the pharmaceutical company. He was chairman and president of the company in New York until 1975. Mrs. Pflueger became his partner in assembling collections of more than 700 pieces.

A turning point in their collaboration came in 1949, when they acquired the Otto Blohm porcelain collection, one of the finest in the world.

"The Pfluegers collected for more than 40 years and formed an absolutely superb collection of French faience and German porcelain and faience," said Anne Little Poulet, director of the Frick Collection. She came to know the Pfluegers when she led the department of European decorative arts and sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Ms. Poulet, who traveled with the couple to shows and auctions, helped persuade them to donate 377 pieces to the Boston museum. Mr. Pflueger agreed to do so on his wife's death. He died in 1997 at the age of 91. The rest of the collection will remain with the family, Ms. Poulet said.

Tracey Albainy, senior curator of decorative arts and sculpture in the museum's European art department, declined to disclose the collection's estimated value.

The collection is particularly admired for the quality of its porcelains from the Japanese Palace in Dresden, Germany. In the early 1700's, the palace was a getaway for Augustus II, known as Augustus the Strong, who was King of Poland and an elector of Saxony and who built the palace specifically for his collection.

The Pfluegers also acquired an impressive number of porcelain figures modeled on commedia dell'arte, the Italian comic theater.

In 1993 Christie's auction house published two books showing the Pflueger collection.

Most of their acquisitions were housed in the spacious Park Avenue apartment that Mrs. Pflueger had designed for them.

But some went to their country home, Kiyiwana Farm, a 1,000-acre property in Dutchess County. The farm has five houses, stables and barns, and a red tea house, all largely designed by Mrs. Pflueger. Formal terraced gardens feature 18th- and 19th-century statuary.

In Manhattan, Mrs. Pflueger was a founder of the Winter Antiques Show, established in 1954 to aid the East Side House Settlement, on whose board she served from 1947 to 1991. Modeled on the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair in London, it became, and remains, one of the premiere antiques shows in Manhattan. Mrs. Pflueger was also on the arts committee of the China Institute and helped design and establish a gallery there.

Mr. Dewey, her nephew, said that Mrs. Pflueger had been a firm believer in the importance of genealogy. Her father was descended from early New York settlers; her mother, from colonizers of Martha's Vineyard and Newport, R.I. One of her grandfathers became a parks commissioner in New York; another held a patent on the term "tomatoketchup."

She belonged to a raft of organizations with lofty pedigrees in American society, among them the Colonial Dames of America, the Order of the Crown of Charlemagne, the Hereditary Order of Descendants of Colonial Governors and the Order of Colonial Lords of Manors in America.

Kathleen Isabel Powers was born on Oct. 4, 1915, the fifth of eight children of Harry Lord Powers and Elizabeth Robinson Hazard at Shrewsbury Manor, their agricultural and equestrian estate in Shrewsbury, N.J. She lived there until she was a teenager, when she was sent to school in Paris. As a young woman, she worked as an interior designer. "Like a lot of people in the Depression," Mr. Dewey said, "she was left with all the trappings, but not much money."

She is survived by a sister, Patricia Hazard Powers Frech, of Manhattan.

Its Always a RUSH in the City of Paved Streets
March















This is pretty typical of the last month in these parts. This was what the RUSH looked like at 10:32 AM on 3/8/06, so you can see the kind of GROWTH we've had during the recent goldRUSH. This is one of the photo's I sent to the movie guy in NYC.

Tonight it's raining, and the rivers are rising. Given the snowpack in the mountains, a warm drenching could bring on some misery. I see it's flooding again in Fargo.

Turns out Ramblin' Jack Elliott owned one of these, maybe he still does.













Let go ridin' in the car, car, lets go ridin' in the car.

I just read an article, "High Mobility", about Hummers and their owners. Say's people spit at you as you go by in an H1.

Muccabull Springs















When we were downtown last weekend, a young girl, well to me she was young, probably about 30, looked me in the eye and said, "Are you one of them old hippies? You are, aren't you? You're an old hippie!"

It's my birthday, so I'm dreaming a little.
























Here's one. I'd really like to get this thing back on the road.

FRESH PACK















My most recent work has involved working as a movie location promoter and working to convince an aspiring movie producer and director to shoot a third of his first feature film here.















What is needed is a factory in a small western town, so I made arrangements to visit the potato plant.

"Need to Know Metallica."























I was coming out of Raley's grocery tonight. This is what I found on the bulletin board in the foyer. While I was taking it down, Michelle Doyle came into the store, so I showed her what I was doing. I handed it to her so she could have a look. She laughed, and said that Sean is in her class.

Red Eye

The World Is a Beautiful Place
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen

and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician



Your Catfish Friend
by Richard Brautigan

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them."



Happy Valentine's Day - bb

Did they ever find that kinetic energy model site with the dancing diagrams?

Life With Bob & Ted

Hi, Bob....I just sent you the payment for the Stuyvesant Hotel shot glass via PayPal.And, If you can....please mail it to :Peggy McMahon14R Stockholm AvenueRockport, MA 01966I'm assuming that the shipping will be the same, if not please send it to me. But, I'd really like her to get it, so please help me on this if you can...Thanks...I had a little trouble with PayPal, in that I did not want to pay via credit card, because of the charges that you would incur. So, I paid by echeck. This was disappointing, because I thought that the money would be taken from my PayPal balance, but it was really taken from my checking account. Not to mention adding time to the deal.But it was enlightening, in that if this happens again, I'll try to transfer from my PayPal account with a direct email to the recipient.Also, I removed the PayPal option from my own listings as now I know why people were having such trouble trying to pay me. With the PayPal listing on the sheet, it seems as buyers are funneled into paying via Credit card.So I deleted the PayPal heading, and listed in my payment option block that I accept PayPal balance transfers, but NO CREDIT CARDS. This is how I had previously listed items, and had no trouble. As I say, this was enlightening to me. And, I hope that it helps you, too. Let me know.... After the item is received by either me (in PA or Peggy in MA) positive feedback will posted for you.Thanks again....Ted Straub


This came in my email today.

Sun Down Moon Up

Here is the moon.